1. Public Editorial Meetings

          There is a Crack in the Museum of History. Is That How the Future Gets in?

          13–14 May 2015

          tranzit.hu, Budapest

          1. About
          2. Images
          3. Program
          4. Video
      1. Wednesday 13 May 2015

        Session 1 TOWARD THE WORST OF ALL POSSIBLE PASTS?

        Location: FUGA Budapest Centre of Architecture, Petőfi Sándor u. 5., 1052 Budapest.

        What was foreshadowed with the spectacular failure of the Arab Spring has become fully transparent with the Ukrainian crisis and alleged return of the Cold War. Designed as the last progressive movement in what political scientist Francis Fukuyama once described as “the museum of history,” the process of the so-called transition to democracy, generated by the collapse of communism, has finally come to a standstill. Today, its whole teleological edifice lies in ruin. Are democracy and capitalism with a “human face” just other “dreamworlds” of modernity’s short afterlife, now revealing themselves to be nightmares from which we are not able to wake up? How might we sustain hope in a world that desperately struggles to prevent the return of the worst of all possible pasts?

        10.00–10.15
        WELCOME & OPENING REMARKS
        Dóra Hegyi and Maria Hlavajova

        10.15–10.45
        INTRODUCTION
        Boris Buden
         
        10.45–11.15
        LECTURE
        The Versailles Complex and the Myth of Post-Communism
        G.M. Tamás

        11.15–11.45
        Coffee and Tea

        11.45–12.15
        LECTURE PERFORMANCE
        Everyone's No Man's Land, Franz Josef
        Ferenc Gróf

        12.15–13.00
        RESPONSE
        Anna Wessely
        DISCUSSION
        Boris Buden, G.M. Tamás, and Anna Wessely

        13.00–14.30
        Lunch break

        14.30–15.00
        LECTURE
        If You're not Against Us, You're with Us
        Jodi Dean

        15.00–15.30
        LECTURE
        Fascisms: Historical, Neo-, and Post-
        Rastko Močnik

        15.30–16.00
        Coffee and Tea

        16.00–17.45
        RESPONSE
        Andrew Ryder
        PANEL
        Jodi Dean, Rastko Močnik, Andrew Ryder, G.M. Tamás, Anna Wessely. Moderated by Boris Buden

        18.00–19.30
        PUBLIC SCREENING
        Dezső MagyarAgitators, 1969-71 (78 min). In Hungarian, with English subtitles.

      2. Thursday 14 May 2015

        Session II PERFORMING THE END OF HISTORY

        Location: FUGA Budapest Centre of Architecture, Petőfi Sándor u. 5., 1052 Budapest.

        In modern times, history was an ignorant master. It was not a story of past events, but an event in itself, which is why it was impossible to learn from. Yet, for Roman historiographers, the Greek word istoria still implied testimony—a personally experienced history, whether our own or someone else’s—thus rendering it a teacher of life. Is memory today, for which history itself has become a past to be remembered, no longer an expression of longing for the lost experience of history that one was able to learn from? Could this be the reason why memory reaches out to the realms of art and performance, to re-enactments and body movements, so as to teach without possessing, sharing, or transmitting any knowledge—striving, that is, to be the cause of knowledge and not its owner? Indeed, art does not produce any knowledge of the past. But could it possibly turn the past into a teacher of life, a magistra vitae?


        10.00–10.30
        LECTURE
        There is No Such Thing as Repetition
        Inke Arns

        10.30–11.00
        SCREENING
        Amorous Geography, (2012), 11 min., by Szabolcs KissPál 
        LECTURE
        Homage to the Half-Truth. Imagination in Historical Re-enactments
        Edit András

        11.00–11.30
        LECTURE
        The Year XXXX
        Jelena Vesić

        11.30–12.00
        Coffee and Tea

        12.00–12.20
        SCREENING
        12 to Make a Peace. Simulation Game on the Treaty of Trianon (2015), screening of the video documentation of the simulation game on the Treaty of Trianon realized by tranzit.hu in collaboration with Tehnica Schweiz (Gergely László and Péter Rákosi), with an introduction by Dóra Hegyi and Zsuzsa László.

        12.20–13.15
        RESPONSE
        Andrea Tompa
        PANEL
        Edit András, Inke Arns and Jelena Vesić. Moderated by Andrea Tompa

        13.15–14.30
        Lunch Break

        Session III PRESENT PASTS: MEMORY, OBLIVION, TRIANON

        Long gone are the times when the past had its proper place in our historical consciousness. Moreover, the historical consciousness that had once guaranteed our orientation within the time-spaces of modernity has evaporated into a myriad of memory cultures that hover over post-historical reality like a fog. It is thus no wonder that one gets easily lost or mistakes various ghosts of the past for the contemporary. In today’s political reality, previously opposing forces that once mutually excluded one another, such as memory and oblivion, often act as brothers in arms. Is this not the case in present-day Hungary, where the memory of the Treaty of Trianon threatens to divide the living even more deeply than it had divided the dead? Are the traumatic effects of this event a legacy of the past or a brand new product of contemporary power struggles? How could we prevent alleged traumas of the past from turning into much worse traumas in the future?

        14.30–15.00
        LECTURE
        1989 and the Rise of Nationalism
        Daniel Lazare

        15.00–15.30
        LECTURE
        “Entropy and the New Monuments” 
        József Mélyi

        15.30–16.00
        LECTURE
        Any World that I am Welcome to (Is Better than the One I Come From)

        Tony Chakar

        16.00–16.30
        Coffee and Tea

        16.30–18.00
        RESPONSE
        Vjeran Pavlaković
        PANEL
        Boris Buden, Tony Chakar, Daniel Lazare, József Mélyi, Vjeran Pavlaković. Moderated by Zsuzsa Toronyi

        18.00–18.30
        CONVERSATION-PERFORMANCE
        History with a Vengeance
        Boris Buden and Jonas Staal

        19.00–20.30
        PUBLIC SCREENING
        The Moscow Trials (2013), 90 min., by Milo Rau

        Ongoing throughout the day: Intervention in the lecture hall by Ferenc Gróf and screenings of Word Domination (2012) by Neïl Beloufa and False Tesimony (2012) by Hajnalka Németh.